!REAL! Star Trek XI trailer out!!!!

posted on January 28th, 2008, 9:15 pm

I hope not Red!! Naa it's really to do with heat problems and fundamental limits of the old style transistor. In classical computing, quantum physics eventually becomes your enemy as you get smaller. For quantum devices, they make use of such laws so it doesn't matter.

Yeah true Dom, all technology reaches a plateau eventually. Typically, they are replaced by better ones. Really Moore's law isn't the first, but the fifth computing paradigm to deliver exponential growth in price-performance (according to Kurzweil anyway). And even so, in the 1970s the computing industry got nervous because of heat dissipation problems, but human ingenuity prevailed and we got decades more growth within the same paradigm.

I'd estimate we have a decade or so to go with old Moore's law, which is quite a convenient timescale if you think about it. After all, it isn't just the QC technologies which will be ready to replace it, there are other nanotech based approaches which use molecular switches too (bottom-up rather than top-down electronics).

posted on February 1st, 2008, 12:21 pm

I'd estimate we have a decade or so to go with old Moore's law, which is quite a convenient timescale if you think about it. After all, it isn't just the QC technologies which will be ready to replace it, there are other nanotech based approaches which use molecular switches too (bottom-up rather than top-down electronics).

you kind of lost me at the end here. think you could Clarify?

posted on February 1st, 2008, 4:46 pm

Current techniques for manufacturing circuitry aim to shrink normal sized components (such as transistors) to ever smaller sizes, a top-down approach which won't last forever. A bottom up approach would be achieved by starting with atoms as building blocks and creating molecular switches, and is one of the aims of nanotechnology. Molecular computing would allow for circuit densities orders of magnitude greater than with ordinary silicon technology. As Richard Feynman said, there's plenty of room at the bottom.

posted on February 1st, 2008, 8:50 pm

Whoa, welcome back, Casper! 

posted on February 2nd, 2008, 7:12 am

The only problem with bottom up is finding materials that conduct well enough... so far... so bad 
...but I am sure solutions abound 

[Dr. Lazarus]

posted on February 2nd, 2008, 2:55 pm

Last edited by Dr. Lazarus on February 2nd, 2008, 2:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.

There are quite a few single molecules which are known to conduct, such as viologen, caretenoids and even nucleic acids. Caretenoids are actually better conductors than many metals due to conjugation; their structure consists of alternating double and single bonds. The materials are usually thiols since they bind favourably to a gold surface:

http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/abstract.cgi/nalefd/2004/4/i02/abs/nl035000m.html

http://www.astro.cardiff.ac.uk/groups/nano/?page=smc

http://pcwww.liv.ac.uk/~nichols/research.htm

Obviously this sort of research is still in the lab stage, but 20 years is a long time in research, and I'm confident that technical issues will be resolved.

posted on February 7th, 2008, 12:18 pm

Conjugated bonds would make a material also pretty resilient against heat...

posted on February 7th, 2008, 1:43 pm

Forgive me  , but I don't see how conjugation is directly related to a material's heat capacity, perhaps you could explain...

Conjugation relates to electronic energy levels; you can construct a molecular orbital diagram, and in small molecules a pi level that might lead to delocalisation is easily recognised. For larger molecules or condensed matter, these energy levels become contracted, until they form a continuum. But all the time we are talking about electronic energy levels. This can surely only have an impact on the optical properties of the sample, e.g. UV-visible spectroscopic measurements.

A compound that is resistant to heat transfer will have a large heat capacity, which generally speaking means that has a large capacity for its translational, rotational and vibrational energy levels being excited. When we then go on to talk about the electronics of a molecule, we are talking about a much more energetic process, one that leads to things like ionisation; in other words, the molecule's goosed! This is the basis for the operation of lasers, where it is the atoms in question which have been excited.

But if there's something I'm missing, please volunteer the information, I'm always interested in learning somthing new .

posted on February 7th, 2008, 4:14 pm

So, STXI.  Is it gonna bomb or not?

posted on February 7th, 2008, 4:52 pm

I'm thinkin not. Hype is enough to make it successful. 

posted on February 7th, 2008, 6:41 pm

Nice Red 

posted on February 8th, 2008, 3:58 am

Will it be a success the way such a film should be, or will it be a success more along the lines of Transformers?

posted on February 8th, 2008, 7:58 pm

I'm thinkin' it's made of some advanced 23rd centrury material that can handle a photon torpedo or two. Actually wait... generally a torpedo will go right through the ship if the shields are down. But, hey! I'm sure it's a nice engineering composite material or something! 

And remember, they can make "transparent" aluminium in the 23rd century which they couldn't make in the 1980s but which we... sort of, figured out how to do by late 2007. 

Well, Doh!  That's because scotty gave it to that company person, so of course we would have it now!!

posted on February 8th, 2008, 9:32 pm

They must have kept it a secret for 20 years. Quite clever really if you think about it.

posted on February 10th, 2008, 7:10 pm

So, that's the real motive for the Enterprise repeatedly entering the past...